[Jeffhs]

Your radio sounds like it is a typical novelty set given away by magazine publishing houses, book clubs, etc. as a premium after signing up for a subscription; the set is usually delivered after the company receives your first subscription payment. These are bare-bones sets that usually don't work too well in anything other than strong to moderate signal areas and do not, as a rule, last very long; if you don't subject these to rough handling or other abuse, they might last a few years, but as cheaply as they are constructed I wouldn't count on it--one accidental drop and the radio is instant junk. They aren't meant to be repaired when they eventually quit, either; they are so cheap that it would cost many times what the radio is worth just to have it looked at in a repair station, let alone serviced. That's probably why your set wound up in a recycle bin; the owner may have thought that, once the batteries failed, the entire radio was junk, especially since the clock batteries don't seem to be standard types.

I have a Midland all-hazard weather radio with FM. The radio has a very small speaker which does a passable job reproducing the weather forecast, but the FM radio sound is extremely tinny -- almost no bass whatsoever. The FM radio sounds much better through headphones or an external speaker, though, so I guess the tinny sound on FM is 99.999-percent due to the built in one. I paid close to $100 for this radio ten years ago at an amateur radio supply store; I would think for that kind of money, the audio quality on both the weather band and on FM would be better than this. However, I think since the radio is intended mainly as a weather alert receiver (with FM thrown in as an afterthought, although the radio is designed to override the FM with the NOAA weather forecast if necessary), the designers didn't pay much attention to sound fidelity, as long as the weather forecast is reproduced clearly.